The late Francis Crick, one of Britain's most famous scientists, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. He is best known for his discovery, jointly with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins, of the double helix structure of DNA, though he also made important contributions in understanding the genetic code and was exploring the basis of consciousness in the years leading up to his death in 2004.
I just take the conventional, non-religious point of view, you know, that after death, that’s the end of you, and- and that’s it. But- but many people are reluctant to believe that, again because I think they have this picture in their minds of people, and the picture sort of goes on after the- after the person has died and so on. There’s certainly a very strong wish, you know, that somebody, even if they haven’t died and you have another chance of seeing them again. There are all sorts of little problems with that. What age would they be when you see them again or will they have a body and this sort of stuff, you know. And of course, people invent a lot of fanciful answers, usually tying themselves into knots in the process. So it doesn’t sound very plausible. I don’t say one can refute most of them; they don’t- they don't have the ring of truth to me. Science doesn’t really offer any sort of consolation, does it, to the idea that one day you’re going to die. I mean, is that- It doesn't offer, well, I don’t think it offers consolation, but I- I think it’s perfectly possible to live- to live in that sort of way. I don’t think anybody- everybody needs to have that feeling. But maybe- maybe it’s a stronger need in some people than in others. But in personal terms, it doesn’t bother you? No, because I find- I find the idea so implausible that I don’t really want to put any weight on it. I won't, I can’t say that it’s positively wrong, but I think, as we understand more about the brain, it'll become less and less plausible. But that may not be true. It may go the other way. For all we know, the research on the brain will eventually lead us to embrace some point of view which is more like the ordinary man’s or religious point of view, that there is a soul which persists after death. I think it’s unlikely myself, but we can’t rule that out. The only way that I would claim to do it is to do experiments on the- on the brain.
Title: What happens when we die?
Listeners:
Christopher Sykes
Christopher Sykes is an independent documentary producer who has made a number of films about science and scientists for BBC TV, Channel Four, and PBS.
In 1993 he and his wife, Lotte, made a series for BBC2 called 'Seven
Wonders of the World', in which outstanding scientists were invited to
talk about themselves and their own seven wonders... Francis Crick
declined to play this particular game (on the basis that 'everything is
wonderful'), but he did agree to spend a couple of hours talking about
his life and and work. The footage did not appear in the 'Seven
Wonders' series, and has never been publicly shown. When Crick died in the summer of 2004, BBC TV kindly gave permission for it to be included in 'Peoples Archive'.
Technical note: the videotapes from which the Peoples Archive streaming version has been prepared had timecode-in-vision in the lower third of the picture. We have reframed the material to exclude this timecode because it is distracting, although this does mean that the image is sometimes a more extreme close-up than either director or cameraman ever intended!
Duration:
2 minutes, 1 second
Date story recorded/uploaded:
1993
Date story went live:
08 January 2010
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